In a mobile communication system, a base station allocates resources to terminals located in a service area of the base station. There may be various resources allocated by the base station. For example, the base station may allocate frequency resources to the terminals. The type of resource that the base station allocates to a terminal may be determined according to a communication scheme supported by the mobile communication system.
In the example of a mobile communication system (hereinafter referred to as a “TDMA system”) supporting a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) scheme, a base station may allocate time-type resources to terminals. The time-type resources may be uplink/downlink (UL/DL) time slots. In this embodiment, a terminal transmits data to the base station in a time slot allocated for UL (hereinafter referred to as a “UL time slot”), and receives data from the base station in a time slot allocated for DL (hereinafter referred to as a “DL time slot”).
In the example of a mobile communication system (hereinafter referred to as an “FDMA system”) supporting a Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) scheme, a base station may allocate frequency-type resources to terminals. The frequency-type resources may be UL/DL frequency bands. In this embodiment, a terminal transmits data to the base station in a frequency band allocated for UL (hereinafter referred to as a “UL frequency band”), and receives data from the base station in a frequency band allocated for DL (hereinafter referred to as a “DL frequency band”).
In the mobile communication system, the base station may not discriminatively but equitably allocate resources to the terminals. For example, in the example of the TDMA system, the base station allocates an identical number of time slots to each of all the terminals.